Afraid
by eidechse
Summary: DallyJohnny slash
1. Default Chapter

Just so you know and don't leave me nasty reviews saying 'you didn't warn me', this IS SLASH. Do we comprehend? goodygood.

And if you don't mind that, read away, I hope you like it...

Afraid

Chapter One

Johnny's girl was small, blond, and real pretty. A greaser, but a nice one. Dally hated her.

Johnny was real proud, you could tell, his very own girl, and a pretty one to. But he also looked a little unsure, at least Dally thought so, when he looked at her, when she kissed him. Granted, Johnny wasn't the bravest person, always slinking around with fear in his eyes. But it was like he didn't really want a girlfriend. Like he thought the idea of it all was good, but when it came to actually having one, it was different.

It made Dally wonder.

Dally was drunk, stumbling by the lot in the middle of the night, startling to a halt when he saw the cross legged figure sitting in the shadows. "Johnny?" he called, testing to see if the kid was awake.

"Hey, Dally," Johnny's voice floated over to him. The older boy walked over and sat down next to him.

"Hey, Johnnycake." He looked over at the kid. Johnny was pretty, with all that dark hair and skin. He'd seemed even more pretty since Dally had started to admit to himself maybe he'd like to kiss him and touch him and...

Dally cut the thought off, doing his best to grin like always at the other boy. "What'cha doin' kid?

Johnny shrugged, glancing in the direction of his parent's house. "Being somewhere other than there."

Dally grinned, nodding. Sometimes Johnny reminded him of himself a little. Not much though—usually he reminded Dally of a little kid. A scared little kid, who'd found out the world wasn't perfect after all and was disappointed and terrified. He didn't get to where he didn't care though. Not like Dally had.

They sat in silence, until Johnny shifted, nervously. "Hey Dally?"

The older greaser looked over at him. "Yeah?"

"Do you ever, y'know with a girl... I mean, do you...." Johnny trailed off, looking to Dally for help and meeting the other boy's puzzled glance. "I mean, do you like it when girls... kiss you?"

A bit surprised, Dally looked up. "Well, sure. This about...." Shit, he'd forgotten her name.

"Lisa?" Johnny supplied. "Yeah, I guess. She's a real cute girl, I just..." he stopped, frustrated.

Dally watched him, wondering whether he was drunk enough to kiss him now, while they were alone and Johnny was asking for help. Probably as good a time as any.

He reluctantly decided he wasn't. Not tonight. "Is there anyone you'd rather kiss?" he asked instead.

He wasn't expecting the nervous, darting glance Johnny threw him. Up to Dally's face for only a second, then back at the ground, looking ashamed. He shrugged noncommittally, eyes still on the ground. Dally wasn't sure what to say, and they stayed like that for a few seconds—Dally watching Johnny, Johnny staring at the ground.

He decided he was drunk enough. "Johnny?"

The other boy looked up and Dally just pressed his lips against the kid's, trying to remember to be gentle. It felt nice, Johnny's soft lips under his, not pulling away until Dally lifted a hand to touch the boy's black hair.

"Dally?" He was scared, his eyes wide and shocked, biting his lip, uncertain again. Afraid. Then he turned and ran. Dally watched him go, wishing he hadn't done it, disappointed, but not surprised.


	2. Chapter 2

Um... It's slash, the characters aren't mine, they're SE Hintons. (I just got her new book for my birthday, btw. I don't really like it as well as the outsider, actually, but oh well) and I think that's all I have to say.

CHAPTER 2

Dally didn't see Johnny for the next few days, only a few glimpses—the time it took from when Dally came to the time when Johnny could get himself away from him. The younger greaser met his eyes only once, and even then it was an accident. Still scared. He didn't look angry though—course, the greaser only saw the kid's face for a couple of seconds, before Johnny jerked his eyes away, jumping up and out the door faster than Dally had known he could move. But still, he hadn't looked mad, just a little confused and a lot anxious.

It was frustrating, and the other members of the gang where starting to give Dally weird looks. Pony had cornered him the day before, looking angry and started to ask, but broke off the question at Dally's venomous glare. No one really wanted to be the one who got their head bashed in when they asked about it, but they all wondered, silently, staring at him when they thought he wouldn't notice.

And he still hadn't gotten a chance to say anything to Johnny. He wasn't sure what he'd say, probably something along the lines of, 'okay, you don't want it, forget it happened and you say anything to anyone and you'll end up with your nose smeared halfway across your face' But he didn't know if he could threaten Johnny that way. He'd already terrified the poor kid. He wanted to say something, though. Anything, really.

Keep him from telling anyone what Dally'd done, mostly. And maybe a few other reasons he didn't usually admit unless he was drunk. The little ones that said he'd come around and let Dallas kiss him again, just maybe.

And then, finally, Dally showed up at the Winston's and it was just Johnny, curled up on the couch in front of the TV, staring off at a patch of the dingy carpeting instead of the dancing cartoon characters on the screen. He heard Dally bang the screen door as he came in, lifting his head for a moment. He looked about to run, then slumped back onto the couch cushions with a defeated sigh.

"Hey Dally," he said, tiredly.

"Hey, Johnny." The other greaser replied, slouching into a threadbare armchair next to the couch, only a cigarette butt strewn end table between them. None of the Curtis's smoked much anymore, and he frowned, puzzled, until he saw the lit cigarette between Johnny's fingers. Damn, he must have smoked over a pack already, and it wasn't lunchtime yet. He hadn't known Johnny smoked that much. "Haven't seen you much lately."

The boy shrugged, inspecting another piece of the carpet.

They sat in silence for a few moments, Dally trying the figure out what he was going to say, Johnny continuing his scrutiny of the floor, tilting his head down a bit more until he was mostly hiding behind that greasy black hair.

Dally shifted in the chair, gazing up at the ceiling, opening his mouth and then shutting it again. "I was drunk, you know," he said, finally, tearing his eyes away from the spider meandering across the ceiling and focusing on Johnny.

The boy nodded. "I know." Dally could barely hear his voice, it was so soft.

"So..." he breathed out, "We can just forget..."

Johnny was nodding. "Yeah," he replied, "Yeah, let's just...."

That's what he'd wanted him to say, Dally reminded himself. _Just forget it happened._

"Yeah," he repeated heavily. "Forget it."

They sat in silence, watching cartoons until Pony came back and Dally left, feeling disappointed but not admitting why.


	3. Chapter 3

And another chapter. I keep meaning to go back and fix my first couple of chapters, make them a bit longer and better written, but.. yeah, that hasn't happened. Oh well. This one's longer and I think a little better written, so…. Read it… and review? Please?

CHAPTER 3

Dally was the one avoiding the gang now, spending his time with the Shepard's gang, at Buck's or at the Dingo. Wherever Johnny wasn't. Part of him was embarrassed at spending do much time trying to avoid someone— Dallas Winston, fearless hood, he was supposed to make people avoid _him. _But not Johnny. He wouldn't scare Johnny. Scared him enough already.

He was at the Shepard's now, sprawled on the couch. No one was home, Tim had left for work. "_Work?"_ Dally had asked, almost falling on his ass laughing. "You _work?_" Turned out he did. Dally had rolled his eyes, hoisted his feet up to rest them on the coffee table and declared that he wasn't going anywhere. Tim had shrugged and left.

Now he was bored, lethargically drinking a beer he'd found in their refrigerator. It was cold, sweating clear drops of water onto his fingers, a welcome shocking cold in the oppressive heat. He was thinking of Johnny, then jerking his mind away, only to have it slide back again the moment he stopped concentrating on restraining it. It was too hot to put any effort into trying not to think of it, and he gave up, furious at himself in a lazy, detached kind of way.

Someone slammed the screen door, and Dally wrenched his thoughts back into a more suitable area as Curly Shepard stomped into the room. He threw Dally an unconcerned glance, and headed for the kitchen. A minute later he returned to stand in the doorway. He regarded Dally with what interest wasn't already occupied with the sandwich he grasped in his hand.

"What'cha doin' here?" he asked around a bite.

Dally shrugged.

"Don't'cha got nothing to do?"

"Nah," Dally yawned, gulping down some more of the beer. Cool down his throat.

"Football?" Curly asked, popping the rest of the sandwich in his mouth.

"Nah." The prospect of tossing a football around with Curly and all his tough tuff tough twelve year old pals wasn't a very tempting one.

Curly shrugged and swaggered back out of the house. Dally sighed, drinking the last of his beer and tossing the empty bottle in a blurred brown arc back and forth between his hands. Sighed again and heaved himself up. He wandered out the door, down the street. Heading for the lot, both wanting to stop and pushing himself forward.

And there was Johnny, alone again, sitting cross legged on the ground, tossing the football high spiraling through the air and catching it as it descended.

He looked up as Dally approached, not saying anything, just watching him. They stood there for a few seconds, silent, and then Dally held up his hands for the football. Johnny threw, then reached out to grab it when the other greaser threw it back again. Back and forth and back and forth back forth back.

…………………………..

They played catch like that until the sun started to set, maybe an hour, maybe two. Dally wasn't paying much attention, lost in the monotony of catch throw catch throw. Ridiculously happy just to be back around Johnny. Until finally he was waiting to feel the thump of leather against his hands and it didn't come. He looked up, puzzled, and Johnny was sitting there, ball cuddled against his chest, looking at Dally.

"Can we talk?" he asked hesitantly, looking a little scared again. Seemed like the only time Dally ever saw him he was scared. He nodded, walking over and sliding down to sit next to him, his back against the brick of the building that bordered the lot. There was silence, either boy knowing what to say.

Then Johnny's voice, tremulous and unsure: "Did you like kissing me?"

Dally shrugged, the roughness of the brick scraping him through his think black shirt as he moved. Then finally, when Johnny didn't say anything else, he decided to be honest. "Yeah, I did."

He heard Johnny move but he wasn't actually looking at the boy, instead watching an old rust bucket car putt valiantly up the street, looking as though it would die any moment. He didn't want to see Johnny's reaction to his confession. He wanted the other greaser to be happy, for a huge grin to stretch across his face at the news. He looked away instead of facing the disappointment head on. The next sentence was a surprise.

"Do you think maybe you could do it again?"

Dally's head snapped around. Johnny flinched a little, his blush visible even in the dimming light. "Sorry," he muttered, sliding down the wall even further and bringing his knees up to huddle around the football still clutched to his chest.

"Yeah," Dally said, a little too loudly, and Johnny jumped and looked back up at him, hopeful. "Yeah," Dally said, more softly this time. "Yeah I will."

Johnny's grin was huge.

"Just not here," Dally added. It wasn't dark enough yet—anyone could see them.

Johnny paused, biting his lip. "No one's home at my house," he said softly.


	4. Chapter 4

Happy New Year! And Christmas or Hanukah or Kwanza or whatever. I have another chapter, woo hoo. Yes, it is short, but if I don't post it short, it's never gonna get posted. So, yeah, another (short) chapter.

Chapter 5

Johnny led the way to his house, pushing open the unlocked door and hesitating, wavering on the threshold a few seconds. A gentle push from Dally propelled him through the doorway.

Dally kissed him the moment the door slammed closed behind them. Right there in the middle of the living room, after a quick glance around to make sure it was empty. Soft, doing his best not to scare, barely touching the other boy's lips. He kept his eyes open long enough to see Johnny's flutter closed, then shut his own.

Johnny pulled away after a few seconds, opening his eyes and studying Dally. They were both silent. Dally knew he should say something, but he wasn't sure what, so he kissed Johnny again, pressing a little harder this time, now that he didn't think he'd run away.

It felt good to finally kiss the younger boy like this—soft and warm, not like he usually kissed but it felt right then. Dally ran his tongue over Johnny's bottom lip and gently pushed it in the other boy's mouth, running his tongue over teeth and lips and tangling with Johnny's surprisingly strong tongue, slick wet against his own. Johnny's hands came to rest uncertainly on Dally's shoulders, bunching up the thin material of his shirt between nervous fingers. Dally lifted one hand to Johnny's dark hair, the other arm loosely snaking it's hand around the boy's back.

The back door slammed and the sound echoed through the room. Johnny sprang away, blushing fiercely red, looking at the floor again. The sound of paper bags being set down came from the kitchen. A few seconds later, Mrs. Cade appeared in the door way. She gave the two boys a tired glance before turning on the TV and slumping into a chair. There was a moment of annoying jingle music accompanied only by blackness before the picture faded in and a comedy routine appeared on the screen.

Dally watched it, aware of the fact that Johnny was taking this opportunity to study him. He didn't really mind. He'd like to be able to stare at Johnny, but the other boy always blushed when he noticed Dally looking.

"I'm gonna go see what the gangs doing," Dally said suddenly, turning to look at Johnny. "You coming?"

The other greaser nodded, following Dally out of the house, letting the screen door bang behind them. _Thank god for screen door bangs_. Dally twisted around to look at Johnny, and by the look on the younger greaser's face, he felt the same way. "That was way too close," the older boy muttered.

Johnny nodded, balancing one foot in front of the other on the curb. He was still a little pale. She could have walked right in on them, and they both knew it.

"From now on," continued Dally, "we're gonna be more careful."

Another nod. 'Stop' was never mentioned. Sometimes later Dally wondered if it should have been. But he knew from the way Johnny had kissed that he wanted this, and Dally knew sure as hell that he did, so they would have it. At least for as long as they could.


	5. Chapter 5

Woo, another chapter. Which I actually don't really like, but oh well. It's a post, if a short one, and I've told myself that I'm GOING TO FINISH THIS STORY. I've never finished a multi-chapter fic. So far, I'm doing good on this one, compared to usually. Mainly because I had a lot of it written already. anyway, here's chapter 5.

CHAPTER 5

It was easier to be more careful once they'd both admitted to and taken what they wanted and topped tiptoeing around each other. It was still a little awkward—Johnny blushing when there was no one but him and Dally in a room, then sidling over for a kiss, jumping apart at any little noise. But it was better than it had been.

No one gave a damn where either of them were most of the time, and so most of the time, they were with each other. Dally didn't have a place of his own—he'd been sleeping at Buck's since he'd been kicked out of his last apartment—so mostly they haunted the Curtis's or the Dingo, when they wanted to be inside.

They were at the Dingo when Lisa came stalking up to their booth. Dally couldn't place her for a few moments, but then he saw Johnny hiding behind his drink and realized it was Lisa. Johnny's girl. Dally had to grin—poor Johnny looked terrified, sliding down the red vinyl seat until he was huddled behind his Pepsi, peering out over the rim of the glass, trying his best to be inconspicuous and ending up looking foolish. Anyone in their right mind would have been hiding—she didn't look at all happy.

Lisa saw Johnny immediately. Completely ignoring Dally, she marched over and leaned across the table, supporting herself on her hands, glaring down at her boyfriend.

"Where have you been?" she asked, dangerously calm.

Johnny sat up a little straighter, apparently giving up hiding, and studied the fries on his plate as he muttered something that even he probably couldn't understand. Dally snorted. Lisa was glaring even more venomously.

"I haven't seen you in a _week and a half_," she hissed.

Johnny said nothing.

"Are you going to ever talk to me again?" she asked, her glare intensifying. "Do you want to be my boyfriend or not?"

There was a moment of silence, with both Lisa and Dally's eyes trained on Johnny, along with a number of other curious people's in the diner as well. Then the dark haired boy shook his head, looking up finally. "Sorry," he muttered.

The whole diner held their breath, heads turning to Lisa to see how she would take the news.

"Why you…" The girl looked about ready to explode. She opened her mouth and shut it, then opened it again. "Fine then," she finally got out, narrowing her eyes at both boys. "I can get better than you anyway." She turned on her heel and marched out of the building to the applause of several of the other tables.

Johnny sighed and slumped back into the seat, looking miserable, but also a little relieved. Dally was having a hard time not laughing at him. Johnny reminded the greaser of a rejected little dog, gone to curl up in the corner with his tail between his legs.

"At least you won't have to try and remember her name anymore," sighed Johnny, glancing up at Dally.

"No," agreed Dally, finally giving in and laughing. "Glory, kid, it's a wonder you ever got a girl in the first place, if you're always like that."

Johnny shrugged, looking embarrassed. "I don't want a girl, anyway," he said softly.

"Well, it's a goddamn lucky thing." Dally was still chuckling, and eventually, a grin appeared on Johnny's face.

"Yeah," he admitted, laughing at himself. "Yeah, I guess it is."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Lisa lost no time in trying to replace Johnny, sidling up to Ponyboy as he and Johnny and Dally were sitting on the Curtis's porch, smiling at him like she'd used to smile at Johnny. The poor kid looked like he was wishing he could sink through the cement steps he'd been sprawled across, or ooze through the cracks in the planks of the porch, right up past his tomato red ears.

"Hey Pony," she simpered, settling down on the step next to him and smiling. "I didn't know you lived here." Dally choked back a snort. Lisa paused her smiling long enough to shoot him a glare, then one at Johnny, seemingly for good measure.

Johnny looked almost as embarrassed as Ponyboy, blushing at each glare she sent him, shrinking back into the corner, edging a little to the right so that he was partially behind Dally. The older greaser was having a hard time not laughing, at both Pony and Johnny's distress. Sure, Johnny was scared of everything, but he'd never of guessed a girl, or one like Lisa anyway, could have intimidated him this much. And Pony looked like he was about to bolt as Lisa continued to talk to him, edging closer and closer over the concrete step.

Finally, Pony made a stuttering excuse to leave, beating a retreat down the street as fast as he could while still maintaining a little dignity. Lisa sighed, glared at the two remaining boys, and pranced off down the street, trailing the unlucky Pony, leaving Johnny looking miserably embarrassed and Dally chuckling.

"C'mon," he told Johnny, banging open the screen door to the house. Johnny followed him, tilting his face up for the kiss that Dally gave him as soon as they'd reached the first room. It wasn't often that they got a chance to be alone somewhere where no one could see them, and Dally took advantage of it, pressing Johnny up against the wall and deepening the kiss. Johnny's hands fluttered a moment before coming to rest on Dally's shoulders, fingers tangling in the ends of the blonde hair.

Felt good, better than the hurried half kisses they usually managed. Johnny was more comfortable now, leaning into him and not nervous anymore. Not hardly at all.

Then Dally felt Johnny jerk and try to push him away. His eyes flew open, and it took him a few second to realize what was wrong as he followed Johnny's horrified gaze to the doorway.

Pony was standing, frozen, staring at them. Johnny had turned pale, fighting to get away from Dally, but he was trapped there against the wall by the other boy's body.

"Pony…" Johnny trailed off, finally getting away from Dally to stand a few feet away, his eyes locked on Pony's face. At the sound of Johnny's voice, Pony jumped, staring first from Johnny's face then to Dally's, shock evident on his horrified features. Johnny took a few steps toward him, and then Ponyboy had turned on his heel and raised out of the house.

Johnny watched him go not trying to follow, his eyes huge and hurt. Dally could see tears pooling at the bottom of his eyes, almost crying. He obviously didn't want Dally to know, turning his head away and blinking a few times. It made Dally mad, both that the kid was crying and that he didn't want Dally to know. He'd never seen Johnny cry and he didn't want to now, not when it was mostly his fault. He turned and left the room, striding down the hallway to the kitchen, still trying to process what had happened. He threw himself down in a chair and smoked three Kools while straining to hear Johnny's sniffling.

Finally he put the last cigarette out and followed the noise back to the living room. Johnny was sitting on the floor in the spot Dally had left him, huddled on the floor. He still wasn't crying, but he looked only a thought away from it, his eyes red. Dally sat next to him, sliding an arm around the other boy's shoulders and pulling him against his chest.

Johnny snuggled into him, shaking a little. "What if he tells someone?" he mumbled into Dally's shirt.

"He won't." Dally wasn't as sure as he sounded. If Ponyboy told… Shit, he might as well just leave town now, and take Johnny with him. He unconsciously tightened his hold around the boy. Johnny squirmed a little, finding a more comfortable position in hi tight grip before relaxing back into him.

"You're gonna have to talk to him, though," Dally added. "He ain't gonna listen to me, not unless I threaten him, and I ain't gonna do that." Johnny nodded, Dally could hear him breath out, shaky. "He'll probably be too scared of me to open his mouth. But you still need to talk to him. Try and get him not to say anything."

He felt Johnny's nod against his bicep, and he relaxed his arms, cradling the boy for a few moments before sighing and standing up.

"We better get going so no one else comes in."

Johnny nodded, standing and wavering to slump against Dally. "Yeah," he agreed. "yeah."

Not the best ending, I suppose, but I just want to get this stupid thing posted. It took me forever to write. Of course it is longer. But still not particularly long. Sorry for making Pony do that, but I'm going for realism, at least a little bit of it, and in the 50's, the reaction wouldn't have been positive. This thing is probably going to get kinda angsty, sorry if that's not your thing, I can't manage to write anything without it, it seems…


	7. Chapter 7

It's been forever and ever since I updated this. Actually, what I really want to do is go back and change Johnny's character a little bit so he's not quite as passive, cuz it's starting to really annoy me, but I figured I should put up another chapter first in case anyone is still reading. Sorry this took so long, hopefully I'll have more time this summer, but actually, it's starting to look more and more like I'll actually have less. But here's chapter seven, anyway, that should be worth something. I'm not particularly happy with it, but I'm afraid if I don't post it now, it'll never get posted. Thanks for reading, reviews are lovely, thanks to everyone who's reviewed so far, and thanks to the person pointed out it was in the 60's, not the 50's. Except I feel a little stupid, but I suppose I'll get over it…

Chapter 7

Nobody said anything to either Dally or Johnny over the next few days, not even giving either of them a funny look, and Dally started to relax. Pony avoided both of them, but apparently he hadn't opened his mouth. Dally didn't know if it was his silent threat or some left over loyalty to Johnny that kept Pony quiet, but it didn't really matter. The fact was that the gang wasn't treating them any differently.

Pony, though, left rooms when either Dally or Johnny walked into them. He hadn't said a word to Johnny, not unless he had to. Dally kept catching the glances Pony meant for Johnny—angry, hurt, disgusted glares that Johnny wilted under. It made Dally want to shake Pony until he stopped treating Johnny like that; Johnny, who never tended to be particularly happy joyful even on a good day was now downright gloomy. He'd tried talking to Pony, Dally had heard them from the Curtis's living room, through the thin wall that separated the room from the kitchen.

"What were you _doing?"_ Pony's voice. It wasn't a question—Pony knew perfectly well what they'd been doing and it pissed Dally off, unreasonably, that Pony couldn't just say 'why were you kissing him?'; that he had to phrase his accusation as a question.

There was a pause in which Dally could only assume that Johnny had shrugged, or maybe just done his staring at the floor trick, letting his hair hide his face. Maybe ashamed, or maybe just tired.

"You were _kissing _him!"

Another silence. Even if Johnny hadn't been looking at the floor before, Dally was pretty sure he would be by then.

"Why the hell were you kissing him?" Pony was getting louder, Dally could hear him clearly through the wall. He couldn't hear Johnny's reply, the other's boys voice was only a murmur in the face of Pony's anger. The tone sounded like 'I don't know', though, and there's wasn't that much else that Dally could imagine Johnny saying to that question, really.

"He didn't make you, did he?"

Dally only had a few seconds to wonder exactly what would happen to him if the rest of the gang thought that he tried to rape Johnny. Pony sounded horrified—it was obvious the thought had only just occurred to him. Then Johnny said "no," louder than anything else he'd said so far, and Dally had just enough time to relax before he started feeling ashamed that he didn't have faith that the other boy would tell the truth.

"You _liked _it then?"

There was another mutter, probably in the affirmative, because next Pony was saying "that's disgusting."

He didn't sound so much angry anymore as confused; his voice was softer, and then Johnny's voice was drowning his out, saying "I'm Sorry," over and over, "I'm sorry, please don't tell anyone." Over and over again, until there was the sound of footsteps and Pony rushed by, not looking at Dally, disappearing out the door.

Johnny wandered into the room a few minutes later, his arms wrapped around himself, his eyes red like he was going to start crying again.

"I don't think he'll say anything."

Dally nodded and Johnny didn't say anything else, joining the older boy on the couch and snuggling closer and closer until Dally lifted his arm and grabbed him into a hug, pulling the boy half onto his lap.

"We should get out of his house," Johnny said, making no move to get up. Dally nodded, but only pulled Johnny closer until the other boy relaxed and closed his eyes.

"What wouldja do if everyone found out, Dally?" Johnny asked a few minutes later. He sounded half asleep. "What if you had to leave? Where wouldja go?"

Dally shrugged, the movement jostling Johnny's head. "New York again, maybe. Anywhere. I can make it anywhere."

"I couldn't. I've only ever lived in Tulsa."

It was probably true. Dally kissed the top of Johnny's head, hair grease sticking to his lips. "Shucks, Johnny, sure ya could."

Johnny shook his head. "I'm barely making it here."

"This is Tulsa, though. You'd do fine someplace else. Besides, I'd take you with me."

"You would?"

"Yeah." He might not be able to take real good care of someone else, but the kid had survived this long, so he must have something of survival skills. He'd watched Johnny, and he wasn't so weak, not usually. Just something about Dally that made him want to be taken care of, apparently.

"Good." Johnny smiled and snuggled down, closing his eyes again. Dally sighed, not sure what he was getting himself into, but not unsure enough to push Johnny away.


	8. Chapter 8

Two things:

1.I had this all typed in the present tense before I went back and checked the rest of this story and then I had to go through and change it all to match.Grr. So, if there's a few leftover wrong tense words, that's why. Sorry.

and 2, there _is_ a reason I upped the rating on this story when I posted this chapter. Nothing too graphic, but better safe than sorry, you know? and I figured it might deserve M just because I keep swearing, so I changed it.

----------------------------

Chapter 8

---------------------------

Summer inevitably turned to fall, the days longer and colder and the light hit the ground in shades of red and gold. Dally noticed Johnny shivering in his faded and tattered too small jeans jacket, and gave the boy an old one of his. The kid wore it everywhere. It was a little too long in the arms and baggy around the waste, but a lot of Johnny's clothes were too big for him, and it didn't look too bad, since the thing was too small for Dally in the first place. It was a little startling to see just how much smaller than himself Johnny really was.

It was the younger boy's sixteenth birthday, and Dally was reminded that he wasn't more than a year or two older than Johnny, even if the gap in their ages seemed bigger.

They had cake for Johnny's birthday at the Curtises', chocolate with thirteen and a half candles because that was all Soda could find. They sang happy birthday, out of tune, while Two-Bit conducted with a fork.

Pony wasn't there. Dally had barely seen the kid since he'd found out about Johnny, even the rest of the gang had noticed something was up. Johnny had told them that they'd had a fight, and they had seemed to accept it. Johnny looked a little disappointed when Darry delivered Pony's half assed excuse not to be there, but no one was surprised, really.

Johnny grinned when they brought the cake out, though, Pony or no Pony. He looked so thrilled that Dally had to wonder how many birthday cakes Johnny had everhad. Not many, judging from his face.

He looked younger than sixteen with the yellow candlelight illuminating his face and Dally's jacket draped over his shoulder, the sleeves coming to the tips of his fingers. He looked up, catches Dally's stare, and grinned.

"You gotta wish?" asked Soda. He was looking at the cake hungrily, he had made it that morning and Dally cast a wary glance at the frosting. Soda had been known to put twice the amount of sugar called for in his chocolate cakes.

Johnny nodded, grinned, and blew. He got almost all of them, but there was still one candle and he was out of breath, so Dally leaned in and blew it out for him. The flame flickered for a moment, then went out.

"Hey!" Johnny gave him a mock glare. "Now I won't get my wish!"

"Sure ya will." Dally settled back in his chair. "I'll give you whatever ya want."

He wasn't expecting Johnny's face to go red; he didn't mean it _that_ way, but it was interesting that Johnny immediately leapt to that conclusion. He smirked a little.

Soda was lost, he looked at Johnny, but he was no help, he was looking down at his smoldering cake, cheeks still pink.

"Cake!" Soda finally said loudly, after a pause. The next half an hour was filled with cake eating and not just a little cake throwing.

It was nearing midnight when Two-bit left, and then when Dally got up to go, Johnny stood up too.

"You ain't stayin here, Johnny?" Soda asked.

"Naw, my mom said somethin about stayin home more."

Johnny's mother didn't give a fuck about where he stayed, it was an easy enough excuse to see through that Dally wasn't surprised when Johnny turned to follow him instead of going home. He didn't say anything about it, just waited at the first corner for the kid to catch up.

No one much was out, it was midnight on a Tuesday, and they walked through the quiet streets, moving from one streetlight pool to the next, through the darkness in between. Dally's apartment was on the second floor of an old building, they climbed the stairs past the dark windows of the first floor apartment.

Johnny was shivering, it had gotten cold suddenly with the night. Dally wrapped an arm around the other boy's shoulders as he fiddled with the lock. It always took some work to get the thing open, the whole apartment was shit, really, but it was better than begging a place on people's couches the way he sometimes had to do.

The door opened and he used the arm around Johnny's shoulders to pull the boy in with him.

Johnny stared at him for a couple of moments once inside, after Dally had closed the door.

"So," the older greaser finally said. "I saw that blush…What did you wish for?"

Johnny blushed again. "Nuthin' like that." Dally believed him, he doubted Johnny would wish for sex on a birthday cake. Sex. It sounded weird to say it even in his mind, so he figured it must be even weirder for Johnny.

Dally shrugged. "But you still want something." He figured the kid did, else he wouldn't have followed him home. He'd never done that before, and it was something in the Johnny was acting that made him sure.

Johnny hesitated, then nodded.

"I…" Johnny looked at a loss. "What do _you_ want?"

Dally laughed out loud. "I want anything you'll let me have, kid." It was the truth.

"Don't call me kid."

Dally paused, looking at Johnny, then shrugged. "Yeah. Okay, Johnny."

The kid grinned. "Kiss me."

Dally obeyed, just standing there for a moment before he pushed the other boy over to the bed. He landed on top of Johnny with a thump that startled a slightly gasping laugh out the body underneath him. Dally had his hands in Johnny's hair when it occurred to him that they'd be better in other places, and he slipped them under Johnny's loose shirt.

His skin was warm and smooth like a girl's, but he could feel the bones and muscle closer under his skin than a girl's. Johnny moaned softly against his mouth.

The shirt came off, and the jacket.

He pushed himself up on his hands, looking down at the boy underneath him. Johnny had his eyes closed, his eyelashes brushing his cheeks, his hair getting in his face. His jeans were stretched taught across the bones of his hips. Dally reached for the button.

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I'm just going to leave it there. I tried to write it, I really did, but it was just shit, so I gave up. Sorry if you wanted to read it….


	9. Chapter 9

Filler fluff. Inserted to keep the writer from having to actually figure out what she wants to happen. I know how I want this to end, in fact I already have it written (somewhere…..) I just don't know what I want to happen between then and now.

Chapter 9

Dally woke up the next morning with sun in his face. Cursing the light, he rolled over, away from the window, and through his slitted eyes, he saw Johnny. He was startled, but only for a moment, until he remembered.

Johnny was awake, sitting on the bed, his legs folded in front of him. He'd put his jeans on again, Dally noted with some disappointment, but he was still shirtless, leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette and watching Dally.

He looked embarrassed to be caught staring when Dally met his eyes. The older boy didn't mind being stared at, really, but he knew if he tried to tell Johnny the boy would only blush more. Instead, he settled for kissing the only part of Johnny he could reach- the boy's jean covered knee.

Johnny grinned, a little sleepily, and Dally liked it—it didn't have any mistrust leaking out of the corners. "C'mere," Dally ordered, hooking his finger in the boy's jeans pocket and gently tugging. Johnny leaned over to put his cigarette out in the ashtray balanced—rather precariously—on the too narrow windowsill, then obeyed, stretching out next to the older greaser.

They kissed for a while, and it was nice. Usually the other people he slept with were gone by the time he woke up, or shortly thereafter. Sylvia was the exception, but it was better with Johnny anyway, even if he wasn't sure why. He decided not to think about it.

Johnny finally pulled away, rolling onto his back and staring up at the ceiling. There was a spider there, right above his head, dangling by invisible means. Johnny grinned, and Dally decided that maybe they should get out of the room before he remembered why it was cheap enough that he could afford it.

"Hungry?" he asked. It didn't really matter what Johnny replied, Dally had already decided that he was hungry, and Johnny was always so skinny, it wouldn't hurt him to eat something, even if he wasn't hungry. Couldn't be to healthy to be breathing in smoke instead of eating something. Nevermind that that's what Johnny's always done, and it wasn't like Dally's eating habits were much better, or that he'd ever even shown any interest in eating habits, anyway.

"Yeah," said Johnny, and Dally stopped his derailing train of thought and got up instead, because Johnny was hungry anyway and it didn't matter because he didn't need to think of a reason to drag the kid to get something to eat. Not that he really ever had needed to—Johnny would've followed him, anyway.

They went to the Dingo. It wasn't crowded, not in the morning, and the lone waitress brought them platefuls of food, and the sheer size of the meal made up for what it was lacking in taste, which was quite a bit.

It was quiet, there were only a couple of greasers there, and most of them had hangovers, slumped in the seats, cradling their coffee in both hands, squinting at the floor tiles. Johnny and Dally ate, the older boy watching approvingly as the younger worked his way through most of the plate of hashbrowns and greasy bacon and sausage. They didn't talk much, the silence was broken only by the wince of a fork as it skittered across a plate, or the clink of metal on metal when one of them bothered to use a knife.

"You want this?" Johnny asked, nudging his plate across the Formica table at Dally. There were two pieces of bacon and a sausage link, looking small and pitiful in comparison to the mountain of food that the waitress had originally plunked down in front of them.

"You should eat it," Dally said, feeling a little stupid for arguing over a couple pieces of bacon when the kid had just downed an entire plateful of food, but at the same time feeling as though he should be firm about it. He could still picture Johnny earlier that morning, shirtless, and the slanting sunlight had thrown thin shadows under each individual rib.

Johnny looked puzzled, but then shrugged, pulling the plate back over to his side of the table but not touching the leftover food. Dally felt stupid enough already that he didn't press things.

They left the diner, and the meat, and strolled aimlessly down the street. Johnny should have been in school, but neither of them said anything about it, he skipped enough that it was pretty commonplace, and the teachers would look down their noses at him whether he showed up or not. Dally should have had a job, but he didn't, besides the odd jobs that he found, or, more often, found him.

They both liked not doing what they should have been doing much more than they would have liked doing what they should have been doing, or at least they did until they passed the DX and Soda flagged them down, looking uncomfortable by the standards of most people, which was very uncomfortable for Sodapop.

"Hey," he said, wiping greasy hands on his jeans. "Uh, Pony said something this morning and I wanted to ask you two, just because…" He sighed, paused and started again. "I mean, I don't believe it or nuthin', but he said he walked in on you two and you were…. He said you two were kissing?"

Dally focused on keeping his face in its same position. Next to him, he heard Johnny breathe in real quick, and thanked God that Soda wasn't the most observant person.

Soda stared at their faces and after a moment or two of silence, he broken into uneasy laughter. "Like I said, I didn't believe it or nuthin'." He looked real embarrassed, and turned around and went right back into the gas station, mumbling a goodbye on his way.

Johnny and Dally watched him go, a little puzzled, and a lot relieved. Dally couldn't help it, he grinned. He'd been feeling close to throwing up when Soda had first cornered them, nausea in his stomach like a hurricane, but now, he couldn't help but see the humor. Johnny was looking a little pale, but he tried a weak grin and after a moment he was laughing, too, and it was okay, everything was okay. They went into the DX to buy Pepsis and continued down the street.


	10. Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

By the time puddles had iced over and snow coated Tulsa's streets, Johnny had stopped sleeping at his parents house and taken up residence at Dally's. He'd moved all his stuff out little by little, sneaking in when he knew that his parents would be at work or passed out too drunk to wake up at a little noise.

Dally went with him a few times, basically sitting on the bed watching as Johnny sorted through his stuff, but Johnny always seemed embarrassed when the older greaser was standing in the tiny room, so he'd quit coming. He didn't know what caused the kid's embarrassment; the room wasn't any worse than the one Johnny was sharing with Dally now—a little smaller, but it was cleaner at least, maybe because no one lived there, but still. The walls were closer to white, and it even smelled better, a little musty but not sour.

But even so, he stayed home and opened the door whenever Johnny clambered up the stairs with another backpack full. It took him six trips, total, over the course of a month to get everything out. Dally found him a couple of old boxes in the alley behind The Dingo to put the stuff in. They smelled like cardboard and musty potatoes, but Johnny still put everything in them and stacked them in the corner, one on top of the other, a makeshift dresser.

It was mostly junk, the stuff that Johnny brought back. Personal. Old letters, a lot of them not addressed to him but instead to his mother, 16 years ago, when she had been young and happy. Letters asking about her new son. It was clear that she had been proud of him, the letters had obviously been in response to bragging words about the new baby. The ink was aging faint, the letters in pencil smudged so badly that they were barely legible.

There was a picture frame, and protected underneath the scratched layer of glass was a couple that Johnny said were his grandparents. Their black and white faces were serious,eyes gazing out over an imagined horizon. Dally imagined them looking at prairie, at fields full of wheat, even though there was a small white house in the background looked like it was in town. It seemed right that they lived somewhere other than dusty old Tulsa, somewhere where there weren't any gangs or guns and you could see for miles.

Johnny wrote a note when he was finished. It was in not real neat pencil on a sheet of paper torn out of his school notebook. Dally saw it when Johnny was in school, the morning after he wrote it and the morning before he pinned it on the door of the empty room that used to be his. It said, bluntly, that he'd found someplace else to stay, someplace better. He'd signed it 'Jonathan' and Dally realized, with an odd amount of surprise, that that must be his real name. It seemed strange that Johnny would be named anything else.

------------

Dally stopped seeing the bruises. With each week they faded, until the only marks were the occasional one from being tackled in football, the bruises that come from bone on bone with only a thin layer of flesh between. They were good bruises. Happy ones.

They were playing football, a week after Johnny had left the note and five weeks after he'd moved into Dally's place, when Johnny's father showed up. The whole gang, except for Ponyboy, who was indside, were collapsed in the dry brown grass after a game of football. Their jackets and sweatshirts were discarded in a pile, but their breath was still making smoky clouds of ice in the January air, and their noses and ears were red and tingling.

Dally was wheezing a little in the cold air, trying to catch his breath. He smoked too much, Johnny was always telling him, but hell, Johnny smoked twice as much as he did. He was always coming home to find out the kid had run out of smokes of his own and had finished off Dally's pack. He was staring at a patch of grass, holding in air and letting it slowly back out as evenly as he could, listening to Johnny's laugh. He looked up, startled, when the laugh ended abruptly with a sharp breath in that even Dally could hear, four feet away with the sound of his own breath wheezing in his ears like distant screams.

It took Dally a few seconds to recognize the man, but when he did, the resemblance shocked him. The man looked like Johnny, in a way. He had the same dark skin and wiry build, the same dark hair and eyes. He looked like Johnny might look in 25 years, but Dally couldn't imagine those bitter eyes taking the place of Johnny's, or the rage that contorted the man's face being at home on Johnny's face.

It was obvious that he was drunk even before he started yelling, spewing out slurred words. "So you've found somewhere better to go, eh, boy?"

One second, they were lying around on the grass and the next, the gang were all on their feet, and formed a circle around Johnny. With some surprise, Dally found himself on his feet and at the front of it, directly in front of the drunk. "Get the fuck out of here," he growled.

Mr. Cade looked surprised for a second. He swayed a little on the spot, putting out a hand to the telephone pole to steady himself. "You ain't got no right to tell me where to go."

The circle had gotten tighter. Dally had Johnny's chest pressed against his back, he could feel the younger boy shaking. A month of peace, and he had let down his guard, and now Dally could hear his sharp intakes of breath, fast and uneven, could feel his fear in the way the boy was leaning against him for support and shelter.

"Goddamn hood. That's my son, you ain't got no right to keep me from talking to him."

"You ain't got no right to treat your son the way you do."

The man took two wobbly steps toward Dally. "Don't you tell me how to treat my son. Johnny, get your ass out here."

Dally took a step forward, about to say something, when Johnny stalked out from behind him and up to his father. Dally's gut reaction was to pull on Johnny's sleeve, pull him back into the safety of the group, but he knew that he couldn't do that, not now that Johnny'd stepped out on his own. No greaser would stand for something like that.

"There you are, you little shit." His father took a step toward him, fists curled, but Johnny, instead of cowering back, stepped forward as well. Mr. Cade halted in confusion.

"Get away from me." Johnny's voice was a low hiss, more threatening than Dally had ever heard him sound. His eyes were narrowed, and his eyes weren't focused on the ground but instead on his father's face.

Mr. Cade gaped at him. "Why you little…" Dally saw the arm being drawn back, starting forward, but when the punch landed squarely on Johnny's cheekbone, the kid didn't utter a sound, he just went down limp as a rag doll.

Jfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjf

You know on Monty Python, where there's that woman who keeps yelling in an English accent "I'm not dead yet!"? That's this story. It keeps yelling at me.

And don't be mad, I hated to do that to Johnny, too. Poor kid, he stands up for himself and look what happens.

Next chapter out over Xmas break, maybe.


	11. Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

"You're gonna have a shiner, kid." Dally gently ran his thumb across Johnny's cheek bone, right underneath the bruising flesh of his eye socket. "You were out cold there for a while. Pony was all for taking you to the Emergency Room, but we figured you'd come around sooner or later, and we all know how you hate hospitals. How are you feelin?"

Johnny blinked groggily, sitting up slowly. They were still in the lot. Dally was squatting next to him on the brown grass, but other than that, everyone seemed to be gone. "Ow. My head hurts."

Dally chuckled softly. "Yeah, I bet it does. I'm surprised you didn't get worse than that, talking to your old man that way." He stood up from his squatting position, stretching toward the sky. "We were real worried there for a while. You hit your head on the sidewalk. I ain't never seen nobody go down like that. He sure got you good. Here." He offered his hand and hoisted Johnny to his feet, wrapping his arm around the smaller boy when he swayed.

"What happened while I was out?" Johnny asked, looking around the lot. "Where'd he go?"

"Your Dad?" Dally laughed. His teeth stood out surprisingly white. "He's lickin his wounds, I reckon. Ponyboy sure lit into him."

"_Pony?"_

"Yeah, the kid was on the porch the whole time. Your dad hit you and before anyone else could do anything Pony came tearin' across the yard and jumped on his back and started kickin' and scratchin' and pulling his hair. Funniest thing I ever saw, 'cept we were all too worried bout you to really enjoy it. Took him damn near 10 minutes to get the kid off."

"_Pony?"_

"Yeah." Dally was still grinning at the look of incredulity on Johnny's face. "He busted open his lip pretty good though, he's inside. The rest of the gang took off after your dad. C'mon, we need to get some ice on your eye."

They found Ponyboy by the sink clutching ice to his lip and wincing as Soda poked at his face. They both looked up when Johnny and Dally came in the door, and Pony immediately looked back down again, embarrassed.

"Hey, Johnnycake," Soda said, pausing with his finger in mid jab. "You okay? Woo! That's some eye!"

"Yeah," Johnny mumbled.

Dally grabbed a handful of ice, ignoring the aching cold that snaked its way into his wrist. "C'mere, Johnny," he ordered, leading the boy into the living room and sitting him down on the couch and handing him a piece of ice, but Johnny dropped it, muscles still clumsy.

"Here," Dally said, picking it up and pressing it gently to the eye. He could see Johnny's wince as the ice made contact, and mentally cursed himself for not being more careful. "You want to hold it?" he asked. "I don't know how hard to press…"

Johnny's hand came up to cup Dally's, warm against the coldness of the ice, but when the older boy tried to slip his hand out from underneath, Johnny's fingers tightened, just enough that Dally knew the kid didn't want him to move.

So he didn't. Johnny relaxed into Dally's touch, his head drooping until it was resting on Dally's shoulder, Dally's hand cradling his cheek.

"I was so scared." He whispered softly. "I ain't never been so scared of him, not since I was little.

Dally slung his free arm around Johnny's shoulders and squeezed. "Yeah?" He said softly. "you sure didn't act like it."

Johnny grinned a little. "Yeah. I ain't never stood up to anyone like that before. But it wasn't bravery or nothing. It was like there was something inside me making me step forward. Like if I didn't, I'd break into a hundred little pieces, all scattered out on the sidewalk."

Dally kissed him softly, quickly, careful to avoid his eye. "I thought you were great," he lied.

Johnny snorted. "I wasn't great. I got knocked down with one punch."

"That was one hell of a punch, kid."

"Yeah." Johnny snuggled closer. "Can we go home, Dal?"

"Sure. You want me to see if we can drive Curtis' truck, or you mind walking?"

"Nah. I can walk."

"I really did think it was great you stood up to your Dad that way."

"Really?" Johnny opened his eyes and looked up at Dally.

"Yeah."

Johnny smiled, closing his eyes again and snuggling into Dally's side a minute before he pulled away and stood up, grinning a little as he grabbed the hand of the still seated Dally and pulled him up, to take them both home.

A/N: Happy Holidays. I'll try to get another chapter out before New Years. Thanks for the reviews, they make me very happy.


	12. Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

Soda, being Soda, was the first one to say anything, and Soda, being Soda, tried to turn it into a joke. "So you two are livin together?" he asked the next day when Dally came into the DX to buy a Pepsi. Johnny was at school, and Dally felt trapped, all by himself with Soda asking questions.

"Yeah," he said finally, putting a handful of change on the counter, mostly pennies, and waited for the grinning greaser to count out his change. Soda slid the coins off the edge of the counter into his hand and started to count slowly.

"So…. Should Sylvia be jealous?" he said, grinning and raising his eyebrows. The counter separating them seemed to give him courage.

"I haven't been with Sylvia for half a year," Dally growled, reaching for his change. Soda held it behind the counter, out of reach, and Dally saw the grin slide off his face, felt the mood in the air change.

"Is there a reason for that?" All pretense of humor was gone from Soda's voice. He was serious, asking a serious question, and Dally knew that he expected a serious answer.

"Give me my change, Curtis." He took a step forward. Soda started to move back on reflex, but stopped himself.

"I've noticed how you two look at each other. You touch him when no ones looking. You may think that you're sneaky enough, that no ones noticed, but I have. And given time, everyone else will. Anyone with—"

The bell on the door jingled and Soda broke off, his eyes darting to the front of the store. "I ain't gonna hate you, Dallas," he said, more quietly. " Not even Pony hates you, even if he makes like he does. But if you don't come clean now, before you're forced to, you ain't gonna have any friends in Tulsa."

The other customer, an overweight woman with two toddlers in tow, thumped up behind Dally in line with two candy bars. She stares at the pair of greasers from behind stringy hair.

"Here," Soda said, giving the greaser his change. "Just think about it, yeah?"

Dally left without saying anything. It was a little cold out, but his leather jacket was heavy, and he didn't want to go home. He took a right at the first cross street, down the sidewalks and past the houses where people lived and fucked and lied to their friends and no one ever knew because they had curtains. Everyone was lying.

The houses were dirty dingy grey and brown, crammed in together with little quilt patches of grey and brown yard, and the sidewalk was narrow and cracked and grassy, and he was shaking and he didn't know why other than that the houses seemed to be closing in and forming big tall fences and the railroad tracks were in front of him, another fence that he couldn't cross because he didn't have a Mustang or a nice house or wear polo shirts like some soc and so theonly way to go was back. That was always the only way to go.

He turned and went back, but as he passed the DX, he thought he could feel Soda staring at him.

A/N: I know this is short, but I didn't want to put it in with any of the other chapters.


	13. Chapter 13

This was totally supposed to be out at the beginning of this month. Sorry. It's very close to being finished though, and the rest of it is done. I had a lot of trouble with the end of this, but I think I got it to where I halfway like it, anyway. Except I think Johnnys ooc. Oh well. He needed to grow a backbone. On an unrelated note, I think I know why straight fics are more common than slash. Dealing with pronouns in slash sucks. And, y'know, I can't think of any other reason.

CHAPTER 13

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He'd wandered around town the rest of the day, until it started to get dark, but the feeling of claustrophobia and panic didn't go away. It took his breath away on the middle of the sidewalk, so suddenly that he had to put his hand out to steady himself on a building, gasping for air. It choked him as he ate a hamburger at the Dingo.

The city, the place he'd lived for the last five years, looked different somehow. He felt like he had back in New York, when some kid had given him a joint and told him to smoke it. He hadn't admitted that he hadn't like it, just never done it again and later someone had told him that it hadn't just been pot. Now he had that same feeling, like reality had shifted under his feet and he was looking at the world upside down, walking on the sky with everyone passing him looking like it was completely normal. He needed something normal.

There was a party at Buck's that night, and he didn't want to go home. He didn't want to see Johnny and he didn't want Johnny to see him, not like he was. Dally'd seen himself in the mirror of the bathroom at the Dingo, and he looked like a spooked little kid. Still.

He could feel himself relax, though, as he came up the sidewalk to Buck's. He could hear Hank Williams spilling out the door, and it was so goddamn familiar that he breathed out slow and could feel his muscles start to relax, one by one, across his neck and shoulders.

The party had been going on for a while and the place was full of people in various stages of intoxication. Sylvia was all over him as soon as he came in the door. She smelled familiar, which was comforting, and he let her touch him for a few minutes before he pushed her off and went to get some beer. She pouted after him, but when he came back, she wasn't there anymore, so he drank both of the beers himself. It wasn't until three beers later that he let her corner him on a couch.

She had on a shirt that didn't really cover all that much and he ran his hands over her shoulders, warm and smooth. He was waiting to feel something, but all he could feel was surprise and guilt and something else unpleasant twisting in his stomach. He went to get more to drink, beer and something else, something stronger, that Buck handed him, grinning.

This time, he let Sylvia drag him upstairs. The feeling in his stomach was still there, but he'd mostly drowned it, it was only a whisper now. They fell onto the bed, and the feeling in his stomach finally evaporated as he undressed her and it was nothing like it was with Johnny and for a while he managed to forget.

He came in late, drunk, and Johnny was lying on the bed, not asleep. He could see the boy's eyes glittering in the darkness as he got undressed. It wasn't until they were lying down side by side, Dally under the covers, Johnny on top, that Johnny said anything.

"Did you like her better than me?" Johnny sounded funny, and Dally couldn't tell if his voice was shaking because he was pissed off or because he was about to cry. He looked at Johnny's face in the dim light and decided that he was mad, mainly, but when he kept talking, Dally wasn't sure again. "I thought I was good enough."

Dally wasn't sure what to say, he didn't know if he can do this drunk, searching for words made him feel like he was trying to eat noodles with chopsticks.

He reached out to touch Johnny instead, shifting his whole body closer, but Johnny rolled away. "You smell like perfume," he informed Dally flatly.

Dally remembered how Sylvia smelled comforting, but he could smell Johnny on the pillow underneath his cheek and suddenly he didn't mind apologizing or even begging if it would make Johnny stay. He didn't usually apologize, and he never begged.

"'m sorry," he mumbled, raising his head to make eye contact. "I just..."

"Just…" Johnny mocked. His voice was thick. Dally reached out for him again, his hand brushing Johnny's shoulder. The other boy's body was stiff, he sat up when he felt Dally's touch. "Don't."

"Sorry." Dally brought his hand back from enemy territory. Johnny crawled out of bed, and Dally saw that he still had his jeans on and a t shirt. He started to fumble with his shoes.

"Don't." Dally's voice was quieter than he'd meant it to be. "Please."

Johnny paused, looked at the other greaser. "I'm never really going to be what you want."

"You're what I want."

"I'm not a girl, Dally."

"I know that."

"I don't think you do."

"Of course I know you're not a girl."

Johnny snorted. "You a queer, Dally?"

There was a silence, while Johnny finished tying up his shoes. "That's what I thought," Johnny said, pulling the second lace into a bow.

He was out the door, letting it slam shut behind him as Dally struggled out of bed. Too slow too slow too stupid too slow.


	14. Chapter 14

NOTE: I have now uploaded TWO chapters in the last week and a half, which is very unusual for me, SO, if you've been reading along and see that this got updated but read the last chapter more than a week or so ago, go back and read the chapter before this, or you'll be hopelessly lost. Not sure if that was really necessary, but I figured this whole updating-without-a-month-and-a-half-in between thing might throw people off.

CHAPTER 14

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It took him too long to get dressed, falling over as he tried to pull on pants, ripping the neck of his old t-shirt that had been worn too thin anyway as he pulled it roughly over his head. He didn't bother to lace up his shoes, instead running to the door of his apartment and taking the steps two at a time until he half ran, half stumbled onto the street below.

He looked around wildly for Johnny, but the only thing he saw was a flicker of movement on his right. He ran after it, stumbling down the streets, cursing his drunkenness, cursing his shoelaces which flew wildly around his feet, the hard plastic ends clicking on the pavement as he ran.

They passed the playground, with its deserted fountain, and past the drugstores and diners that made up the downtown of the greaser's part of the city. Dally was gasping for breath, the sound of his rasping air in and out was the only thing he could hear. But he was catching up—Johnny had never been much of a runner. He could see the small figure darting through the patches of yellow light that the streetlamps threw onto the pavement.

Then, suddenly, the figure skidded to a halt and ran back the other way towards Dally. Confused, Dally slowed to a stop, watching Johnny come closer and closer. It wasn't until the boy was only about fifty feet away that he noticed the other figure stumbling along the sidewalk behind him. He became aware of the yelling at the same time. Johnny's father.

It looked like Johnny was going to get away. His old man wasn't that far behind, but he was holding his side and falling back. Johnny looked up, saw Dally, and looked around wildly before darting into the mouth of an alley, running straight into a pile of cardboard boxes and falling heavily onto his hands and knees. It took him only a second to drag himself to his feet and start limping off again, but it was too long. Mr. Cade ran the last few steps and grabbed his son's shoulder, swinging him around and pinning him against the side of the building.

Dally was at the mouth of the alley in a heartbeat, feeling for his switchblade in his back pocket. There was no way Johnny could get to his—he was struggling against the bigger man with no success. His father was talking, muttering things in Johnny's face and Johnny had his eyes shut real tight, Dally could see him swallowing, his throat moving in the darkness.

"Let go of him." Nothing. He took a few steps forward and tried again, screaming as loud as he could, pouring in all the anger of the last twenty-four hours. "Let go of him!"

The man ignored him, drawing back from his son enough to drive his fist into Johnny's stomach. The boy doubled over, gasping, and Dally took three huge steps forward and grabbed Mr. Cade around the stomach with both hands, heaving him away from Johnny, who skipped back a few steps and kept watching with huge eyes.

The man crashed into the other wall and staggered, finding his balance, starting toward Dally and then hesitating when he got a good look at the greaser, narrowing his eyes from a safe distance. "You ain't got no business telling me what to do with my son. Get the hell out of here."

"I ain't goin nowhere."

"Oh, you ain't?" The man laughed, stumbled forward a few steps, fumbled with a hand in his pocket, and suddenly he was holding a switchblade. Dally didn't even think about it, he stuck the hand out with his own switchblade in defense, drawing one foot back as the man lunged for him.

And he felt the blade slide into flesh. It took him a minute to realize what had happened, and then the man had swayed and fallen, hitting the side of the building on the way down and coming to rest all at odd angles.

Dally stared down, holding the hand with the switchblade up as if to see that it was really true. The blade was wet, shining with sickening regret in the light from the street. Johnny made a sound in the back of his throat, standing against the building with his hands clamped as tightly as he could over his mouth, his eyes huge. Dally took a step toward him, slowly as he could, and the boy flinched back, looking down at his father, then back up at Dally.

"Oh, god," Johnny said, so softly that Dally could barely hear, and then he turned and ran, as fast as his limping foot would take him.

Dally looked down at the body and he knew that it was just that: a body. He looked away, shaking. He wiped at his face and the hand came back bloody. Gingerly, he felt his cheekbone and felt where the skin was torn. He didn't remember getting cut there, but there was a ring on the body's hand, Dally could see it glittering at his feet where the arm was flung out only a few inches from his foot. He took a few slow steps back, into the light of the streetlight. A car drove past, headlights sweeping for a moment into the mouth of the alley, across the body. It didn't look like a body. It didn't look like anything, not here in the dark on a mostly deserted street. No one would find it until morning. He felt sick, leaning against the wall fighting a wave of nausea.

Then he turned and walked away.

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O the drama! Possibly a little melodramatic at parts/specifically, the knife shining bit/ but before I rewrote it, it was all like it was building up to something… and then the guy gets killed, no big deal, let's go on with our lives. Anyway.

Thank you for all the reviews, it's great that there were two people who thought that last chapter was their favorite, it renews my faith in myself to know that this story is not going downhill. Yet, anyway.


	15. Chapter 15

Thought I'd get this out before I left on Spring Break. So I can spend the 1 and half weeks wondering if I got any reviews. Cos I love reviews so much. Hint hint. Anyway, enjoy.

CHAPTER 15

Dally went straight to the train tracks and stood looking at the old abandoned train cars for a while. There weren't any coming through that night, it would be morning before he could hop one, but he couldn't stay and wait. He needed money. He needed a place to hide. He needed a plan.

He turned and walked shakily back to his apartment. Johnny wasn't there, but he hadn't expected him to be. He picked up the jeans jacket that was lying on the bed, intending to layer coats, before realizing that it was Johnny's and dropping it like it was a snake. Johnny hadn't taken his jacket. He didn't have another one.

He filled his pockets with all the extra money that was lying around—not much, he'd just paid rent—and put on as many shirts as he could stand and sat on the bed, trying to make himself calm. He needed somewhere to go. Bucks? No, that'd be the first place they'd look. And Darry wouldn't be happy about Dally showing up at two in the morning when he found out why. He thought about Shepard's, but there was no guarantee that Tim would be there, and his mother didn't like Dally.

He wrapped his arms around his legs and shivered. He'd have to just go outside of town. Maybe hitchhike a ways down the tracks and hop a train in the morning. The next one went to Windrixville. His cousin had told him about an old church that would make a good hideout if he needed one down that way.

He got up and started toward the door, pausing for a moment with his hand on the cool metal of the doorknob before turning around and grabbing Johnny's school notebook off of the floor. He needed to leave something. He needed to give Johnny the option of following him.

_Johnny— _he wrote

_I'm going to Windrixville. There's an old church there, if you want_

He paused. No. Johnny didn't want to follow him, not right now, that much had been obvious. He scribbled it out.

_If you need to find me. _

He couldn't just leave it on the bed; he didn't want just anyone to find it. Johnny's jacket was still on the floor. He folded the note up and put it in one of the inside pockets, before carefully folding it and laying it on the bed.

He took one last look at the place and headed out.

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He walked until it started to get light, and then he got a ride from an old farmer who was visiting his sister in McAlester, wherever that was. He kept cleaning underneath his fingernails with his thumbs and nodding his head to his western music. He did most of the talking; Dally sat and stared out the window in silence, watching Oklahoma go by, brown and gold in the rising sun. It would probably be a while before he saw it again. He waited until they were a good thirty-five miles out of town before he thanked the guy and hopped out, in some little middle of nowhere town, on the side of the train tracks.

The road paralleled the train tracks, so he hid himself in the brush so as not to look too suspicious hanging around next to the old dead trains and waited. The train went through Tulsa at four in the morning, but he didn't have a watch, and anyway, he wasn't in Tulsa. He crouched there and told himself how stupid he was until he heard the train's whistle in the distance, and got himself ready.

Five minutes later it was there, in a rush of noise and air and it slowed down to almost a crawl through town but never actually stopped so he had to run alongside and pull himself up, heart beating wildly above the sound of the metal wheels on the metal tracks.

Inside he curled into a ball on the empty floor and shook so hard he scared himself. He kept thinking of Johnny's horrified face, how big his eyes were. He hadn't meant to kill him. Not in front of Johnny, he wouldn't have.

It was fully light by the time he got off the train. He didn't really know where he was going—his cousin had said something about a mountain, but the most he could see were hills. He started walking, along the dirt road, hoping the church would just sort of appear like a mirage or a magical wish.

It was some time later that he finally saw what he assumed must be it. It was on top of a hill so big it could be considered a mountain, tiny against the sky. He started up and was gasping for breath by the time he got to the top. The church wasn't much inside, he thought maybe Johnny might like it—it obviously had once been pretty and there was still some stained glass in the windows—but he pushed the thought away as Johnny's face came swimming to his mind.

The church was dusty and obviously a lot of bugs had taken up residence in the pews and on the stone floor, but he fell onto one of the pews and used two of his many shirts as a pillow. It wasn't long before he fell into a much welcomed sleep.

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He went into town that first day so that he wouldn't have to go outside at all for a few days. He bought some woman's hair dye and dyed his hair jet black. He had wanted to buy a flannel shirt and a pair of loose jeans—he wanted to look like a farmer's son—but there was barely enough money for food so he settled for the dye job and hoped that the fuzz weren't looking for him in particular. There hadn't been any witnesses except Johnny.

It was boring, sitting in the dark church all day. He couldn't help but keep playing the night over in his head, and he kept thinking of Johnny, against his will. He imagined him being there so much that when the boy actually did appear in the doorway, he assumed that his imagination was just taking things a step further and closed his eyes in retaliation. It was only when he heard the voice that he opened his eyes and lifted his head.

"I had a terrible time finding this place," Johnny said, stepping inside.


	16. Chapter 16

A little short and sort of Hallmark-y occasionally. Also: The Last Chapter. (!) Only there will be an epilogue. It's written and saved on disk… somewhere. I have a bad habit of not marking my disks, and also not bothering to throw out faulty ones, so I have to go through about ten disks before I find anything. Right. Anyway.

Yay for Lifelike, that was probably the nicest review anyone has ever given me. And the rest of the reviews were awesome too. Thanks for getting to the end!

CHAPTER 16

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"Johnny?"

The boy stepped further into the church, out of the doorway so that he was more than just a silhouette against the sunlit outside; a real person, with the colors and details in the outline filled in so perfectly that Dally knew he couldn't be imagining him. He was wearing his jeans jacket and an uncertain smile as he walked toward Dally.

"I wanted to follow you…" he fished around in his pocket and came up with the note. "Um… I found this and so I decided to come." He paused, looking at Dally as though gauging his reaction. When there wasn't one, he took a deep breath and continued. "I want to go with you, wherever you're going. I ran away because I wasn't sure what I wanted, but now I am."

He'd gotten to the edge of the pew where Dally was lying, his head cocked to the side as he looked down at the the older boy. A backpack was slung over one shoulder and he had most of his weight on that leg, with his opposite hip sticking out, and he looked tired and scared but mostly hopeful.

It wasn't something that Dally had to think about. He reached out a hand and pulled the kid down to sit next to him, wrapping both his arms around the thin shoulders and holding on because he'd found what he thought he'd lost.

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They spent four days there, not really because they had to, but because inside the church everything was dark and quiet and there wasn't anyone else but them. Johnny went to the store the day he got there and bought them enough food for the next week and they sat around eating and talking.

And it was nice. There were bugs, sure, and the mice scurried across the floor, blurs of gray just seen out of the corner of the eye. But they didn't have to worry about anyone walking in on them when Johnny's head was in Dally's lap. They didn't have to whisper to each other when they talked about some things, their laughs were loud and clear and long.

Dally would never have guessed that his safe haven would end up being a church in the middle of nowhere. But it was a haven. He could see it in how Johnny acted, open and not as reserved, his eyes meeting Dally's instead of staring at the ground in front of him.

As long as he had known Johnny, the boy had had this curled up feeling to him, like he was trying to hide behind himself and then trying to hide those parts behind other parts until he was all crumpled in and curled out. He'd lost it in the last few days. Ever since that first kiss, it had been like their relationship had been tinged with fear, and Johnny had just realized that there was no reason to be afraid anymore.

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They did need to get out, though. They were running out of food, and no matter how much this old dusty dim building seemed like a sanctuary now, Dally knew that it wouldn't be long before it started to feel like a prison.

He brought it up finally, hesitantly. He was sprawled on the deteriorating cushion of the alter with Johnny's head on his lap, and he felt like he was breaking the peace that hung around them by talking of other places, but before the words were fully stumbled out of his mouth, Johnny was nodding.

"Where would we _go_, though, Dal?" Johnny asked, tilting his head so he could look up at his lover.

"I dunno," Dally said, with an elaborate shrug that shook Johnny's head and shoulders. "I was thinkin' maybe New York before you showed up… You wanna go to New York, Johnnycake?"

"What's it like?"

"New York…." Dally paused, thinking back to the city he remembered only in pieces. "New York is tough. There are gangs there, not like in Tulsa, but _real _gangs, and there's always a rumble somewhere. It's hard, y'know, but it's exciting, too, and it seems so huge, and you can smell the city in the air."

"Would I like it?"

"I… don't know," Dally answered honestly. He looked down at the boy in his lap, tried to picture him in a city like New York. He looked small, lost. Dally placed himself next to him, big and threatening, and the picture looked a little less out of place. He grinned down apologetically at the head in his lap.

Johnny grinned. "Well, I could try it, hmm? You ain't gonna abandon me on a street corner before I get my bearings, are ya, Dally?"

Dally grinned and grabbed his arms so he could pull him up to kiss him. Johnny's legs were sticking out onto the stone floor, long with his feet tilting out.

"I ain't gonna abandon you nowhere, kid," Dally said, pulling back a few inches and grinning at him.

"New York, then?" asked Johnny, tipping his head forward to rest on Dally's shoulder and snuggling into his neck.

"New York," agreed Dally, tightening his arms around Johnny. New York. He didn't know what would happen to them once they got there, but he had Johnny with him, and he knew that whatever it was, together, they had a good chance of surviving it.

The End


	17. Chapter 17

Hey, there isn't actually another chapter to this story, but there IS a sequel (!) So, if you'd like to read it, I thought I'd point you on over to _Only Living Boy in New York_

( ) or look in my profile for the link.

It's going to be a little different than this story, (less of an outsiders fic, I'm basically just using the characters for a story about a small town boy in NYC and stonewall, etc) but if you liked this story and you want to read more, give it a shot. Plus I've got a lot of it written, so no really long breaks in between chapters, at least for a while.

Thanks for reading my shameless plug. Go read the story now?


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